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SCIENCE. 



[Vol. VII., No. 168 



lessness of such a system of negation ; they have 

 shown that social reform is possible, and that 

 rational improvement need not be checked by 

 the bugbear of the wages-fund which Malthus 

 and his followers set up as an absolute fact ; they 

 have demonstrated that other classes besides the 

 workmen have duties to perform, and that the 

 solution cannot be reached by declaring the labor- 

 ers themselves the sole cause of all their own 

 unhappiness and dissatisfaction. 



Ricardo, again, with all his keen and penetrat- 

 ing analysis, based his apotheosis of free compe- 

 tition on insufficient foundations. The half-cen- 

 tury that had elapsed since Adam Smith began 

 his work, had converted the slow industrial 

 change into a revolution. In the domain of in- 

 ternational trade, indeed, the conditions had be- 

 come peculiarly favorable for an application of 

 Smith's doctrine, and Ricardo did an admirable 

 work in paving the way for the anti - corn - law 

 league of the forties. But the semi-metaphysical, 

 the a priori element in the 1 Principles of political 

 economy and taxation,' produced a set of unreal 

 and inapplicable conclusions. The theory of eco- 

 nomic progress which formed the result of his 

 labors is as unsubstantiated as it is pessimistic. 

 Profits must fall, rent must rise, and wages must 

 remain about stationary, not keeping pace, on 

 the whole, with the advance of wealth and pros- 

 perity. In this there are some grievous miscon- 

 ceptions, not the least being the assumption of 

 'natural wages' and ' natural profits ' varying in 

 an inverse order to each other. But here, again, 

 Ricardo is the child of the particular epoch in 

 which he lived. His assertion that profits rise as 

 wages fall, and vice versa, has lent the socialists 

 of to-day the great argument of the necessary 

 antagonism of capital and labor. Ricardo, curi- 

 ously enough, passed over this, and drew the 

 conclusion that the interests of laborer and capi- 

 talist are identical as against their common 

 enemy, the land-owner. Wages and profits go 

 hand in hand, opposed to the 'landed interest.' 

 Who docs not see that the peculiar conditions of 

 England at this time were responsible for a theory 

 which has lately been reformulated and exagger- 

 ated by George ? Ricardo, indeed, was no enemy 

 of the working-classes : his opponents, who term 

 him 'a heartless worshipper of mammon,' * the 

 founder of the Hebrew-Caledonian school, flunk- 

 ing of nothing but the interests of money,' are, of 

 course, guilty of an absurd exaggeration. Just 

 because he wished for the welfare of the toiling 

 masses, did he attempt to remove the obstacles in 

 their path. He was an able advocate of the repeal 

 of the combination laws in 1824. But his efforts 

 were limited to removing the Legislative obstacles : 



he did not yet perceive the necessity of removing 

 the obstacles that were growing out of the system 

 of free competition itself. During the years hi 

 which he matured his conclusions, the evils of the 

 factory system had not yet become thoroughly 

 developed or widely known. Ricardo's ideas were 

 not yet entirely unsuited to the period, even 

 though we of to-day must confess that his desire 

 for abstract generalizations, founded on insuffi- 

 cient postulates, initiated a method of reasoning in 

 economics, which led to many fruitless discussions 

 and hair-splitting distinctions. We will not go so 

 far as Jevons, in saying that " that able but 

 wrong-headed man, David Ricardo, shunted the 

 car of economic science on to a wrong line ; " but 

 we do maintain that his exclusive use of hypo- 

 thetic methods — i.e., a system based on the hy- 

 potheses of natural law, coupled with a belief in 

 the infallibility of self-interest — produced serious 

 exaggerations and results, not in accord with the 

 actual facts. Ricardo's theories are like rough 

 diamonds, incrusted in dirt and sand ; it is the 

 duty of the economists of this generation to 

 pare down and polish the edges, ridding them 

 of their excrescences, disclosing in some instances 

 the flaw in the jewel within, which renders it 

 worthless, but showing in other cases that the core 

 at least is sound, and capable of reflecting the light 

 thrown on it by the lamps of recent experience. 



The so-called orthodox school of England — 

 McCulloch, Senior, James Mill, etc. — pursued an 

 opposite course. Instead of clearing up, they 

 increased the confusion ; in lieu of modifying 

 Ricardo's conclusions, they attempted to embed 

 them more firmly in the unsubstantial founda- 

 tions. One proposes to make of the science 

 a mere ' catallactics ; ' another wishes to cail it 

 ' chrematistics,' a mere science of exchanges. All 

 agree in venerating the absolutely immutable 

 natural laws, which it is sacrilege to tamper with. 

 The factory laws they deride ; the trades unions 

 they howl down ; the growing abuses of the facto- 

 ries and the great corporations they have no eye 

 for. " Labor is a commodity," they say: " if men 

 will marry, and bring up children to an over- 

 stocked and expiring trade, it is for them to take 

 the consequences. If we stand between the error 

 and its consequences, we stand between the evil 

 and its cure ; if we intercept the penalty, we per- 

 petuate the sin." They quote with approval Dig- 

 nan's phrase, " To augment the annual production, 

 to carry it as far as it can go, and at the same 

 time to free it from all restraints, — that is the 

 great object of government." No thought of any 

 higher aims, of a more equitable distribution — 

 simply the greatest possible increase of material 

 commodities. And even the noble Cobden was 



